


1984 Alternate Ending

by kurjeris



Category: 1984 - George Orwell
Genre: Alternate Ending, Classics, Gen, Literature, References to 1984 - George Orwell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-30 03:01:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15087566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurjeris/pseuds/kurjeris
Summary: This story is from one of my English projects! Basically, we had to write an alternate ending to one of the works we had studied over the course of the year. It was a group project, and we chose 1984 by George Orwell. I ended up being the only person to write it, so here it is! In the original version, Winston is brainwashed and ends up loving Big Brother. In this version, Winston still has some left over feelings of rebellion stored inside him. Read my story to find out the rest! Enjoy!





	1984 Alternate Ending

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning: rats, gore, death, suicide

Winston sat in his usual corner at the Chestnut Tree Café, gazing blankly into an empty glass of Victory Gin. A waiter came by in intervals to refill the glass, but Winston paid no attention to him nor the constant supply of the saccharine-flavored substance. The telescreens were spouting tinny music, or perhaps an update on the war against Eurasia. Either way, Winston wasn’t listening.

He looked up at the wall opposite him, staring directly into a pair of large, familiar eyes. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, read the caption underneath. A sudden, violent emotion came into Winston’s mind, but quickly faded. In that moment, it almost didn’t matter; he could hardly tell what was happening around him, let alone what was happening within himself.

  
After noticing his glass had been refilled, Winston picked it up and drained the liquid in a single gulp. Instantly, he shuddered at its nauseating taste. No matter how many glasses he had emptied, he never seemed to have gotten used to it. Curiously enough, the synthetic drink seemed to remind him of something deep within his own mind, something wretched, something sinister. The smell of the Victory Gin resembled the smell of those devilish creatures, those —

Winston couldn’t continue, even if it was simply a thought. Instead, almost as a source of comfort, he began to think of Julia.

“I betrayed you,” she had told him.

“I betrayed you,” he said in return.

She had then confronted Winston for giving up inside Room 101, for submitting to O’Brien, for ultimately surrendering his heart to Big Brother. All he cared about was himself, according to her. Winston managed to avoid those — those creatures, but as he sat and mused in his usual corner of the Chestnut Tree Café, with the Victory Gin at his side, regret began to flood through every vein of his rigid body. Suddenly, the varicose ulcer on his right ankle throbbed. He shifted in his seat, resisting an overwhelming urge to scratch the irritated skin. For a moment, he was thrust back into reality, removed from his last moment with Julia. It was of the past — immutable, impossible to fix. To care about oneself was to escape death. But to Winston, she did the same. It was all the same. All Julia cared about was herself, too.

Eventually his mind brought him elsewhere. Now he was deep within the vile bowels of Room 101. As before, he was securely strapped to a chair, unable to move in any physical way possible. This time, the mask was completely latched onto his face. The cage was opened by O’Brien. There were no barriers between him and the starving, scurrying, squealing —

Even in this conceivable encounter, Winston couldn’t bring himself to name them. He tried to break from their menacing stares, but the image of those animals was painfully seared into his memory. The creatures had somehow dug their way into his eyes, his mouth, his cheeks. Some even managed to desperately claw their way into his brain. Thick blood sprayed in every possible direction, staining the already filthy walls of the room with sickening pieces of gore. The small beasts squealed in pleasure as his violent screams were instantly stifled. They bit, they tore, they ate. They would stop at nothing to consume every last part of their victim’s flesh. Within seconds Winston was an unidentifiable mess, a fragile body with a missing face. But the mind hidden under that face, the mind that had just been savagely destroyed, had remained heretical. In this perfect moment, Winston had died hating the Party. The rats — he could finally compose the word — had set him free.

The same violent emotion rushed into Winston’s body again. His varicose ulcer itched more than ever. He wasn’t really free; he hadn’t been murdered when his defiance was burning at its strongest, most resistant point. Truthfully, he had quivered before O’Brien, tossing away every last remnant of his dignity. In that shameful moment, he had lost Julia, lost her love, lost her trust, lost himself. There was no method to evade that weakness. He had satisfied the unstoppable dominance of Oceania. He had been reformed, altered into a loyal machine with no sense of individuality. Forever, it seemed, he would obey the Party. Forever he would remain weak under the faces of the telescreens until the bullet would come to blast his reconstructed mind to pieces. He lacked the courage to defy, and his inner hatred was extinguished in return. He himself was entirely responsible for eliminating his own unique place amongst the world. Every little crevice in his body continued to ooze with impenetrable regret. It promptly occurred to him that it was all an awful mistake. He had survived under a mask of conformity for much too long. He wanted to become heretical again, to awaken the dormant power of mutiny once more. The violent emotion stirred within his bosom for the third time. His heart had awakened from its momentary rest. He no longer wanted to follow the daily routines in his controlled life. He no longer wanted to tremble before those overpowering eyes plastered on every wall. He no longer wanted to admire Oceania for its sickening ways. To him it became an obvious fact that his hatred would always exist, and the Party could do absolutely nothing to suppress it. To live loving them, that was cowardly.

He started to cry. Tears of anger, not sadness, flowed from his anguished eyes, down his reddened cheeks, and onto the grimy table. The waiter approached with a chessboard along with the most recent issue of the _Times_ ; he noticed that the glass was empty and came back to refill it. Winston began to absentmindedly place the chess pieces onto the board almost as if it was some kind of reflex. He then glanced at the poster on the wall. White always mates, it seemed to tell him. Black never wins. Winston looked back at the chessboard. Good will always triumph. It was always that way. White always mates.

A screeching trumpet-call pierced the air. It was coming from the telescreens. Victory! Oceania had defeated Eurasia! Instantly a wild cheer rose up outside. People were running into the streets, roaring with indescribable passion. Their brutal excitement flooded into the café, masking the electronic voices emerging from the telescreens. Amongst the screaming, Winston could make out only a few phrases: “Complete demoralization — victory — greatest victory in human history — victory, victory, victory!”

Winston had no reaction to the commotion. Instead, he gazed at the glass sitting at the table’s edge. His hand tensely grasped the drink. It was completely filled to the brim; some of the liquid was dripping over its edge and onto the table where his tears had previously fallen. The lukewarm fluid felt repulsive against his skin. No matter how foul the taste was, he found himself curiously devoted. The oily smell, the overly-sweetened, artificially-spiced flavor, all of it, seemed to latch onto Winston as if some kind of parasite. He nearly retched at his unsettling attachment. Victory Gin was his only comfort; Julia was no more. The gin was what stabilized him throughout the day and night, through times of misery when the Party’s overpowering regime was impossible to block out. It was a shackle that Winston had willingly placed on himself. It put him under an unbreakable spell that kept him forever alive, forever numb, forever suppressed.

The telescreens were still spouting their triumphant message, but the people in the streets had finally calmed down. The waiter came by to check if the glass was empty, but it still remained full in Winston’s hand.

He had stopped crying. No tears could replace the anger that was quickly rising in his chest. Suddenly Winston pushed himself out of the chair and, taking his drink, forcefully smashed it on the table. The glass instantly shattered into several large fragments. Gin spilled all over. The loud crash must have startled the waiters in the café, but he didn’t bother to look. He was in another world where rage could be properly expressed. His fingers searched over the broken pieces until he found one with the sharpest edge.

Winston’s sight moved from his newfound weapon to the enormous face on the wall. He stared at the poster’s eyes, locked in a competition of dominance, showing no mercy, unable to be broken. In that instant Winston shoved the glass deep into his neck and dragged it slowly across his throat. Blood burst from the fatal wound, onto the table, onto the newspaper, onto the chessboard, staining everything with the color of rebellion. White didn’t always mate — sometimes red did. He collapsed onto the table. Not once did he break eye contact with the face on the poster. Winston couldn’t breathe. His trachea was severed, red was spreading everywhere. But it was alright, everything was alright, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over the Party. He hated Big Brother.

 


End file.
